WAR CRIME Chapter Six
St. Joseph’s church, Baghdad
Murdered Minority
Before 2003, Christians had been relatively safe in Iraq. Saddam Hussein's deputy prime minister for nearly a quarter of a century, Tariq Aziz, was a Christian. At least one of Saddam’s chefs was Christian - less likely to poison him, it was presumed.
But soon after March 2003 Saddam Hussein’s protection evaporated and violent attacks on Christian churches began.
A stained-glass window in one of Baghdad’s churches
Shortly before Christmas 2005, my battalion commander host Colonel Farrell arranged for me to visit St. Elia's Chaldean Catholic church in east Baghdad, and its parish priest Father Bashar Warda.
A convoy of US Humvee armoured cars took me there - thirteen soldiers, with their rifles, shotguns, handguns and turret-mounted machine guns. I was wearing body armour and a helmet.
There were two guards at the entrance to St. Elia's, armed with AK-47s. One of them greeted me with a broad smile and a warm handshake and introduced himself as Stevan. A year earlier, in what was believed to be an al Qaeda attempt at mass murder of Christians, a car bomb outside the church killed three people. At the same time on the same day, as worshippers were leaving after Mass, at least ten more Christians were murdered in attacks on four other Baghdad churches.
St. Elia's is a smart new building with seating for more than five hundred people. At that time, there were about two thousand Christian families in New Baghdad.
Next to the church there was a Shia mosque. As immediate neighbours, it made sense for them to share a massive generator. In the church courtyard, three Muslim women were praying in front of a painted statue of the Virgin Mary. Mary - Mariam in Arabic - is venerated in Islam, and so is her son the prophet Issa (Jesus).
Here again I sensed that it would be safer for my American escorts - and for Father Bashar and me - if they left me at the church and came back later to pick me up. If the convoy had stayed, we might all have become a target for an attack.
Off went the three Humvees, sending up dust along a suburban Baghdad street on a hot December day. No one outside the walled compound could have known that I hadn't gone with them.
I removed my helmet and flak jacket. Despite the time of year - Christmas week - it was ferociously hot. The ceiling fan in the church office was chopping the air at full speed. Father Bashar spoke fluent English. He was confident the feast would be celebrated more openly this year, as he'd seen Christmas trees in the windows of many homes in the neighbourhood. But as a prudent security measure there would be no midnight mass at the church - instead there would be an early-morning service after dawn on Christmas Day. And because the loud call to prayer from the mosque next door would audible from inside the church, the Imam agreed not to use his amplifier while Christmas services were under way.
There was more to the relationship between the church and the mosque than respectful behaviour and sharing a generator.
There was a primary school in the church compound for about five hundred pupils, Christian and Muslim. The mix was approximately 60% Christian to 40% Muslim. For their first three months at the school, Father Bashar told me, children of both faiths received the same 'moral classes' - "to learn the importance of tolerance, co-operation, working together, studying together, accepting each other. This is the Iraqi way of living together."
He practiced what he preached. During the 'shock and awe' bombing and shelling of Baghdad in 2003 the crypt of St. Elia's was used as a shelter for three hundred Christian and Muslim families.
"We were all in here for seventy-two hours," Father Bashar told me, "we were eating and drinking and living together, and supporting each other - forgetting about Mass and morning and evening prayers."
Despite the menace enveloping his country in late 2005, Father Bashar remained optimistic. "I think Christmas day will be a good day for the birth of the new Iraq," he said.
I wished him Happy Christmas, and asked how to say it in Iraqi Arabic.
"Aïd Milad Saïd."
Over the next five years persecution of Iraqi Christians became increasingly vicious. So many were killed - or left the country - that the ratio of Christian to Muslim pupils at St. Elia's school reversed from 60% Christian - 40% Muslim to about 80% Muslim - 20% Christian.
In 2003 there were more than a million Christians in Iraq. Ten years later there were about three hundred thousand. Hundreds were murdered, thousands chose exile. Several priests were attacked and killed - one was beheaded and dismembered. An archbishop of Mosul died after he was kidnapped. A priest in Baghdad was kidnapped, and only released when a ransom was paid. Dozens of Christians died in bomb attacks on their churches during mass.
Al Qaeda in Iraq and its successor ISIS killed hundreds of Christians, and threatened many more out of their homes. Christians, and secular Sunni Arabs too, were driven from their homes in the southern Baghdad suburb of Dora, which al Qaeda then declared that they had occupied and 'liberated'.
The assault on Christians began in 2004, with bombs placed outside those five churches in Baghdad, including St. Elia's. Over the following decade, more than sixty other Iraqi churches were bombed.
On Christmas Day in 2013, three bomb attacks on Christian targets in Baghdad killed thirty-seven people.
The most ferocious attack took place in 2010, at the Church of Our Lady of Salvation in Karrada in central Baghdad. Islamic State militants got into the church while mass was being celebrated. They set off a car bomb in the street to breach the wall of the church. Once inside, they shot dead two priests and held the congregation hostage - demanding the release of al Qaeda prisoners, and threatening to 'exterminate' Christians if their demands weren’t. When Iraqi security forces stormed the building, the Islamists threw hand grenades and detonated suicide vests - killing between forty and fifty people. (The Iraqi army and the police gave different figures for the number of dead).
When I visited the nearby church of St. Joseph's a few weeks later, people arriving for Mass were being searched by security guards. About half the pews were empty. A choir accompanied by a single flute filled the church with tragically beautiful chants.
I'd come to see the priest in charge, Father Saad Sirop Hanna. He was struggling not to be despondent:
"Sometimes I ask myself is it worth it to live all this for democracy or for freedom? Sometimes I hate freedom, I hate democracy - because I saw so many people die. Sometimes I say maybe it is not worth it."
Father Saad had a particular reason for his shaky belief in the struggle for democracy and freedom.
He had survived a kidnapping.
He was driving home from his church one day when his car was boxed in by two vehicles. Men fired weapons in the air, opened his door, and forced him into their car. They blindfolded him and tied his hands behind his back.
They kept him for 28 days.
He told me there were "good days and bad days. Some very bad days. Sometimes they actually hit me with cables. Yes! They threatened me several times - "We are going to kill you" - and I thought it was my end. Anyway God had another plan for me."
I asked Father Saad how he had behaved.
"To tell you the truth I actually have this faith, this internal calm that I am not alone. This is my faith. I believe in Christ. I believe that for everyone who believes in Christ, that He will be with him even in the bad days. That was my force."
He said he had many 'discussions' with his kidnappers about his faith.
It turned out that the main reason for kidnapping Father Saad was not because he was a Christian but because the gang believed they could use him as a bargaining chip with the Americans to get some of their own prisoners released. He told them he had nothing to do with the Americans and that he had no way of influencing them.
One day the kidnappers told Father Saad,
"Today we are going to finish it." "Finish it. That's when I thought that they were going to kill me."
They'd actually been clumsily telling him that they were about to set him free.
They drove him around Baghdad for about an hour. Then they stopped, untied his hands and his blindfold, and told him to get out and walk away and not look back.
Unknown to Father Saad, his mother and his brother and his parishioners had raised the ransom to secure his release. When I met him, none of his family were living in Iraq any more. His mother and his brothers and sisters had emigrated to Sweden, and two other sisters had settled in the Welsh capital Cardiff.
But Father Saad stayed.
And the persecution continued.
When ISIS fighters conquered Mosul in the summer of 2014, they gave Iraqi Christians an ultimatum: convert to Islam or we’ll kill you.
An estimated one hundred and twenty thousand Christians moved north to the relative safety of Erbil in semi-autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan.
Father Saad Sirop Hanna